What Is A Third-Party Scheduling App?

A third-party scheduling app is a program (developed by a company other than Instagram) that's designed to allow Instagram users to plan, schedule, and automate their posts. Automation is only permitted for business accounts, however, planning and scheduling is available for all users (with push notifications offering a reminder to post at the scheduled time).

Why Use A Scheduling App?

You might think that adding another app to your social media strategy would only complicate things more, but hear me out. Scheduling offers you tons of opportunity to refine and organize your Instagram aesthetic.

Planning your feed: During the early stages of Instagram, people didn't give too much thought to the overall appearance of their feed. "Strategy" was a very loose term in the industry, and mostly referred to planning promotional posts. Now, a cohesive and thoughtful feed is one thing that will set your account apart from the millions of other Instagram users, and gives your profile a clean, professional look. Check out some of my favorite examples: here, here, and here.)

Batch uploading content: Why only upload one image or video at a time, when you can upload tens (or even hundreds)?! Batch uploading saves time and helps you stay organized when laying out your content and planning your feed. Once you have all of your digital assets in one place, you can visualize your feed more completely.

Greater organization: Stay on top of which photos you've already used from a recent photoshoot, plan upcoming promotions, track holidays, and more, by planning your content in advance, you can ensure that you never miss #nationaldonutday EVER AGAIN.

Tracking & Analytics: Most scheduling apps offer at least basic analytics to help you track the performance of your content, usually since you began using the app. This means that most scheduling apps do not run data on posts that have not be published through the app. If you're interested in longer-term data, check out this blog post for my favorite scheduler for data nerds!

What do you think? Are you ready to try scheduling your Instagram feed? If you're interested in receiving one-on-one help to start scheduling and strategizing your 'gram, click here!